The Role of Aesthetics and Design

Pateman, Matthew, Harrison, Daniel, Marshall, Paul and Cecchinato, Marta E. (2018) The Role of Aesthetics and Design. In: CHI 2018 - 2018 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 21st - 26th April 2018, Montreal, Canada.

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Abstract

Wearable technologies are increasingly popular, but often abandoned. Given their highly personal nature, aesthetics and form factor play a key role in adoption and continued use, but thus far little work has focused on this. This paper presents a three-part study to better understand the role of aesthetics and personalisation within wearables. We provided 15 participants with customised, low-fidelity, nonfunctional “activity trackers”, based on their own designs, for in the wild evaluation. Our participants’ use of these prototypes provided us with insights into their feelings towards their existing commercial devices and their own designs alike. We found that aesthetics plays an important, and currently underappreciated, role in use and continued engagement, particularly when the context of use is considered. We suggest that manufacturers should embrace adaptability and DIY cultures, allowing end-users to customise their wearables and support them in appropriately choosing, and creating their own designs.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Wearables; activity trackers; user-centred design; personalisation; aesthetics
Subjects:	W200 Design studies
Department:	Faculties > Engineering and Environment > Computer and Information Sciences
Depositing User:	Paul Burns
Date Deposited:	13 Nov 2018 12:58
Last Modified:	11 Oct 2019 18:45
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/36658

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